Rob Arnold: Never There to Begin With

WHAT YOU WERE TOLD

That he used his fingers his

fists his teeth that he threw you

into the wall put cigarettes

out on your back the smooth

white disks still visible

that he bit you open

pinched your legs

and ass until the lumps

formed that he held you hostage

ransomed you for sex

that he kept your mother

captive stole her savings

so she could not run

that he was out of prison

by now nobody knows where

that you were a year old and he was

a Navy man his name was Ricky

Joseph he was your sister’s father

that your own father wasn’t

there to help because he was

never there to begin with

SLINGERLANDS

There was ambivalence in the snowfall.

We had watched the shapes of deer slip eerily

into the gap of the woods, all haunch and headlight

and the negative space where eyes would go,

crows clotting in trees, or misting over the thruway

like effluvia from our dreams.

The sky in the west had opened its throat.

The shadows lengthened with no words.

Later, we’d pull off our skins

and lie sleepless till daybreak,

emptied, undignified, drawn

into the strangeness of the other’s heat.

But for the moment we stayed,

looking out into the almost motionless blue

while the neighborhood shimmered,

so it seemed, between us.

Then there was the black hound baying,

then the closing of the mouth.

The regret and the consequence,

the hot breath on our thighs.

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Rob Arnold's poems have appeared in PLOUGHSHARES, HYPHEN, NATURAL BRIDGE, and elsewhere. Many years ago, he cofounded the journal MEMORIOUS, where his interviews with Robert Creeley, Bill Knott, and others appeared. He is also the former managing editor of FENCE / Fence Books. Currently, he reads for the National Poetry Series and serves as coeditor of Grid Books.